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TI: Okay, so now tell me about your family in terms of siblings and birth order.

MA: Okay. (Mamma), as I said before, she had several children (after) my brother, (Ike). Now, my brother was born in 1913, she had, would have had, as I say, twelve of us, and I would say that probably seven or eight of them came (after) him, either stillbirths or died after birth. And there was one child who was fourteen that, he was younger than my brother, Ike. And he died at fourteen from I don't know what, but that one, he lived that long at least. And then there was a girl that lived 'til five, swallowed a nickel and they couldn't retrieve it, so she died. So then, all I knew, I don't remember seeing the fourteen-year-old, but then I do remember my brother, Ike, was born in '13, and then after, then me in 1924, and then my sister four years later. So the three of us siblings are the ones that survived.

TI: Okay. So Ike, you, and your sister's name is...

MA: Rachel.

TI: Rachel. Good. So Ike is quite a bit older than you.

MA: Yeah.

TI: Eleven years older.

MA: Eleven years. And he was, well, there's a long story then. He had a terrible inferiority complex. He had gone to school, elementary school, and some kid called him a "dirty kike." So Ike was honest as the day is long but tough as hell, and so he clobbered him, and the teacher took the side of the guy that called him a kike, dirty kike, and so then off Ike goes to the principal. The principal also sided with the other guy, and so Ike left school never to return to school again.

TI: And how old was he when this happened?

MA: Well, I don't know for sure, but then he was probably twenty. No, he had to be younger because he was in elementary school. And so he, however, he found solace in going to, well, my dad put him up in a shoeshine shop, but he just wasn't a city business kind of a guy, and so he did go to sea eventually. This was before the war. And he was in the maritime for a long time, and then during the war he was, I think, still aboard a ship that was taking stuff to Da Nang and all that. When was Da Nang? That was later, wasn't it?

TI: Yeah, was that the Vietnam War?

MA: Yeah, that must've been the Vietnam War. Yeah. So, but during World War II he was in the army. That's what it was. Sorry, I get a little confused here.

TI: No, no, that's fine.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.